


Mockingjay Lion

by NeverBeyondRedemption



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: 73rd Hunger Games, 74th Hunger Games, 75th Hunger Games, Careers (Hunger Games), District 12 (Hunger Games), District 2 (Hunger Games), F/M, Hunger Games Victors, Victors as a Family (Hunger Games)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:42:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24990238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverBeyondRedemption/pseuds/NeverBeyondRedemption
Summary: Cato won the 73rd Hunger Games but he broke in the process. Now Katniss Everdeen has volunteered to take her sister's place in the 74th Games and when she comes out, she might just be able to piece the prior victor back together again. Catoniss, quite AU obviously. Follows entire series. Rated T because it's the Hunger Games and Cato's a violent brute.
Relationships: Cato/Katniss Everdeen
Comments: 5
Kudos: 44





	1. Reaping

**Author's Note:**

> This is a rewrite of the version I wrote when I was thirteen.
> 
> Setting: Cato volunteered a year earlier and won his games but, like he did towards the end of the games in the books, he snapped. A year later, he’s still recovering when Katniss volunteers.
> 
> Catoniss.

He’d retreated to the television room long before the two newest district 2 tributes had arrived. Brutus and Enobaria had decided it would be best if he was safely ensconced onboard before the crowds arrived to bid their two potential heroes farewell.

He’d heard them come onboard; derogatory comments about the other tributes and gloats about how they’d please the capitol drifting before them. He hadn’t turned when they swaggered in but he’d heard them hesitate when they saw him. Then he’d heard the hurried retreat as they scampered back to the safety of the dining car.

Clove had volunteered, she’d told him she would a couple of weeks ago. She’d picked her timing well; when he was in an abandoned training room, exhausted from a hard workout. He’d killed every dummy in the room, then done the same with the three avoxes between the training room and Enobaria’s room. His mentor had sedated him.

The boy was a volunteer too of course - just as arrogant and bold as he had been. He parroted the same drivel about how he was going to win honour and glory for his district, he flexed his muscles and even wore the same facial expressions.

He didn’t have the same mindset though, not really. That was what had made Cato the most successful victor in hunger games history. He held the record for most kills and shortest games, despite having been a year too young when he volunteered, but the price had been his sanity. His gloating and parroting had been replaced by blood and death, a crimson sheen across the sedative filled haze of his memories of the first six months outside.

As his reputation grew, the number of annoyances and triggers shrank. Those close to him - his mentors - learned his moods and those who didn’t know him kept their distance. Even fearless, bloodthirsty, violent Clove was no longer safe around him.

He glanced at the time on the TV screen, displayed beneath a slowly rotating Panem seal. The others were gathering outside, perhaps gathering their courage. He rolled his head over the back of the couch and sprawled his legs out in front of him.

There was a gentle knock on the door, then after a pause, Enobaria stepped in. Behind her filed Clove and her partner, followed by the other seven living victors from 2. Cato tracked them across the room with his eyes, noting as all ten of them squeezed into the remaining two couches and the armchair, leaving the spots to either side of him empty so that he had the couch to himself.

Lyme pulled the heavy curtains shut, heavy blue velvet turning the room completely dark. In the light of the glowing TV and for want to any other spot left, she perched on the furthest arm of his armchair and fixed her gaze firmly on the screen.

Enobaria leaned forwards, Brutus grunted as she accidentally elbowed him in the ribs, and she brushed her fingers over a metal disk on the coffee table. The Panem logo went black and then a moment later the familiar face of Caesar Flickerman announced - to raucous cheers - the beginning of the reapings.

District 1 came first, the flashy glass fronted Justice Building with the superfluous reaping bowls taking pride of place on the stage. An escort with coal-black complexion, swirling patterns bleached yellow over expanses of exposed skin. The volunteers were up before their respective tribute’s names were even called. They were nothing like their usually standard; the boy had a weedy, slimy look to him and the girl was pretty but certainly not a killer.

Clove volunteered in the place of a fourteen year old with acne, then the male tribute was almost bowled over by his volunteer. Dominus was his name and he had definitely read the Cato Stone handbook. He even beat his chest twice and raised his fist in the air which had almost become Cato’s signature move during the games.

The girl from 5 was interesting, her eyes betrayed a fierce intelligence but her build was slight and weak. The two volunteers had already dismissed her and Cato mentally chalked up their first mistake. They should have been aware of a potential Johanna Mason. Everyone laughed cruelly when a boy with a crippled leg was selected from district 10 but their amusement faded when a tiny girl was reaped from 11. Even the most bloodthirsty of the victors didn’t like having to kill twelve year olds. Her partner was a huge eighteen year old boy and Cato could hear Brutus telling the two tributes that he would be the one to watch out for.

Then district 12 was up, the grubby justice building disguised behind banners that were already greying as the dust kicked up by the gathering crowd settled. Their escort wore an absurd pink dress, matching wig and a huge ring that clinked loudly against the glass bowl as she fished for a slip.

‘Primrose Everdeen,’ she announced. The camera scanned the crowd, searching for the unfortunate girl. They zoomed in on a commotion around a tiny, stick-thin girl with her hair pulled into two blonde braids. She was impossibly small and one of the district 2 victors let out an unhappy sigh, Primrose didn’t even look eleven. Suddenly there was a commotion at the back of the shot, among the oldest children and a brunette stepped out into the aisle between the boys and girls.

‘Prim! Prim!’ The girl cried. She sounded shocked and desperate as she hurried forwards, barging the peacekeepers aside and sweeping the younger girl behind her without a moment’s hesitation. ‘I volunteer!’ She gasped and the victors and tributes around Cato stirred in surprise. Cato pulled in his sprawled limbs and leaned forwards, his interest captured.

‘I volunteer as tribute!’ The brunette from district 12 repeated more clearly this time. The people on stage shared uneasy glances, unsure how to act in the face of this anomaly. The escort said something but Cato wasn’t listening. The younger girl had begun to scream, clinging to the elder’s legs until she was swept off by a tall boy with similar features to the girl. The mayor looked slightly pained as the girl declared her name; Katniss Everdeen. Then the escort finally called for applause but the entire district remained silent, then a single starved looking man, blackened with coal dust, raised his fingers to his lips and into the air towards the girl on stage. One by one the rest of the district followed in their strange, silent salute.

The commentators didn’t seem to know what to say of the refusal to applaud; one eventually said that the local customs were charming. Then the drunk fell off stage and the spell was broken. The boy from her district was nothing special, except for the moony eyes he sent in Katniss’ direction when they shook hands.

The TV flickered off as Enobaria brushed her finger over the control again, then after a moment of tense silence in the darkness, Lyme groped her way to the curtains and flung them open. They blinked furiously for a moment, every person in the room using the same tactic to adjust to the brightness quicker.

‘There we have it, you’re both in luck.’ Kurt Bonatz turned to the two volunteers. ‘A weak field this year, your main competition will be the male from 11...’ Cato tuned out his annoying voice with its almost capitolite accent. The boy from 11 would be competition but so would the volunteer from 12. She had the will, the need to win. That was what it took, a certain character, will and a realism that all four of the volunteers from their districts seemed to be missing this year. The games weren’t always hunting and winning sponsors. The games meant sleepless nights, constant fear over the alliance breaking up, posturing and threatening, injuries that went unhealed, hunger and a lifetime of torture if you were lucky enough to survive. 12 knew this, hunger and pain were old friends to her. You could see it without even looking in her eyes.


	2. Rooftops

Katniss tossed in bed for over an hour before she gave up on sleep; she was still buzzing with the success of the opening ceremony and the glares she’d received from the other tributes during training today. She didn’t doubt that she had made an impression on the sponsors, but she was also painfully aware of the equally strong impression that she’d made on the other tributes. A great, fiery target had been painted on her back.

With that thought she swung her legs over the side of the bed, her feet flexing against the unfamiliar, polished floor. It wasn’t as cold as she expected, but she pulled the silvery velvet blanket around her anyway and shuffled out into the main room.

It was deserted, no avoxes standing in their dedicated alcoves. Hay itch was probably passed out somewhere, his snores audible enough that there probably wasn’t a closed door between him and the room. Her blanket whispered against the floor as she padded into the lift and pressed the button she’d noticed earlier. She was whisked upwards in an almost imperceptible movement and a moment later the doors slid open with a soft chime.

She emerged into a moonlit rooftop garden filled with silvery flowers and dark leaves.. The stars shone strangely strongly above them, considering the urban glow that radiated up from the streets below. She could hear the celebrations from here, music and shouting and the occasional burst of song.

She wandered idly between the exotic plants, searching for a place to lay her blanket. The smooth pavement beneath her feet meandered between short trees, and she wondered where their roots went if they were growing on a roof.

There was a figure already seated on the bench nearest the edge, mostly obscured by the tangle of branches between them. The silvery moonlight shone off his bond hair and sturdy form. She could hear his foot tapping, a habit she hadn’t known he had. Perhaps he was as nervous about training as she was; Haymitch’s instructions to go nowhere near her strengths did not sit well with her. She followed the stupid winding path which led her around the flowerbed and and towards the bench, approaching from the front.

‘I though you were asleep, Peeta.’ She called out. Peeta’s head snapped up, only it wasn’t Peeta. The features were wrong; his chin wasn’t as square and his cheekbones were more pronounced. The hair was shorter and a lighter shade of blond. Katniss froze as she recognised Cato Stone, the victor of the 73rd Games. She had watched as little as possible of his games but remembered them to be one of the bloodiest games in history. Cato had lost whatever shred of humanity careers had after his first kill in the bloodbath and had killed six tributes before he even reached the cornucopia. Then he’d gotten hold of a massive sword from the cornucopia and the games were pretty much already over. Eleven tributes fell to his hand on the first day, the other careers managed four between them and the career alliance hadn’t even lasted the night.

On the third day, Cato had been declared victor. He’d attacked Caesar Flickerman during his interview after the games and been dragged off by six peacekeepers. She’d recognised the haze of drugs during the victory tour having seen her mother’s patients often enough, but there’s still been rumours that two peacekeepers had been killed in an incident.

‘Peeta probably is asleep.’ The mad victor said. Katniss stood awkwardly, trying to think of an escape route as Cato’s ice blue eyes slid over her, taking in every detail. Suddenly he gestured to

the space beside him on the bench and deciding that appeasement was probably the safest option she obeyed. With her flight instinct on overdrive, she perched nervously on the edge of the bench, ready to flee at a moment’s notice.

Cato was huge up close, his long arms bound by muscles that flexed as he moved. His shirt was pulled tight over his shoulders and chest, the grey fabric making his sculpted muscles look like a stone statue.

‘Sorry, I mistook you for my district partner in the bad light.’ She apologised awkwardly.

‘I know who Peeta Mellark is, I’m not that out of it.’ He said sourly and Katniss felt a flicker of fear run through her. Careers hated her district for some unknown reason, she thought they really didn’t have anything to spite them for. Cato himself had killed both tributes form her district - Grace had been one of Katniss’ classmates.

‘Why did you come up here?’ She asked curiously. Cato’s glance was dark, despite the bright blue of his eyes. She suppressed her shiver, determined not to show any weakness that he might feed back to Dominus and Clove.

‘Enobaria and Brutus won’t look for me here; I’m not supposed to go anywhere in the capitol without an escort.’ He laughed humourlessly ‘They’re probably afraid I’ll kill one of their precious sponsors’. He answered surprisingly honestly. She winced, wondering if tributes like her were offered the same protected status as the sponsors.

Katniss looked Cato over with renewed caution, suddenly noticing the short throwing knife in his hands. He kept turning it over in his hands, watching the play of light along the razor sharp edges. Her mind was swamped by images of him sinking the blade into her, blood spattering his face and chest as it had in his games. Her breathing sped up unconsciously and Cato heard, unsurprisingly. He turned so he was facing her and spun the knife in his hand casually, holding it out for her inspection. It was a similar size and shape to the one that Clove had been using earlier but the blade looked like solid gold.

‘You recognise these?’ He asked quietly and Katniss nodded.

‘It’s a throwing knife, Clove was using ones like it earlier.’ Katniss shuddered at the memory of the knives slamming into the targets, hitting each one dead centre.

‘They have always been her favourite, she was good with them right from he beginning.’ He inquired and Katniss nodded. ‘You ever tried using one?’ he continued and Katniss shook her head.

‘Not really.’ She hadn’t wanted to try them out with the careers there because it would have showed up how much worse she was than Clove. The throw in the train carriage had been mostly luck.

‘Clever.’ He complimented. ‘You would have looked even worse if you’d gone after her,’ she would have been insulted if he hadn’t said it so factually. ‘I can teach you if you’d like?’ He offered. She swallowed, torn between accepting his offer and not wanting anything to do with a career.

Cato twirled the knife again and in a flash of movement the blade spun out of his hand. Moonlight sparked off it brightly and it landed with a heavy thud, sinking several inches into a false tree trunk several meters away. The hilt quivered slightly from the impact and Katniss couldn’t take her eyes off it. Practicality won out and she nodded for him to show her.

The burly career stood with a grace that belied his size and yanked the knife from the tree with visible effort. The district 12 girl briefly considered how much softer her body was than a trunk and how far that knife would have gone if she was the target. He passed it to her hilt first, and she realised that despite looking like solid gold, the handle was made of something soft and smooth, perhaps leather. It was surprisingly heavy, with a short, lethally sharp blade. She weighed it for a moment, then took the stance she’s used for previous attempts back home. The velvet blanket pooled about her ankles, and cool air brushed her calves and shoulders.

Cato adjusted her position, pushing her feet into a slightly different position than her archery one and adjusting her fingers so that she was holding the entire length of the handle rather than just the tip.

‘You don’t have time to learn to spin it. It will reduce your range, but you’re more likely to get it right.’ He explained as he guided her through the motion of throwing the knife. His body was warm, and she shivered when he stepped away, wishing he was still close. Then she scolded herself. Cato was dangerous, she shouldn’t even be letting a career that close. What would Gale say?

She practiced the motion of throwing several times, receiving productive feedback each time. Finally, he told her to release the knife and she flicked it out of her hand. It spun once, hit the side of the tree with a heavy thunk, then dropped to the floor with a clang.

She grinned. That hit may not have killed someone, but it would have broken a rib or at least given them a pretty nasty gash. Cato’s smile surprised her; it was a genuine happy smile, nothing sadistic or mad about it. She hadn’t believed that was possible for a career.

She threw it several more times with Cato making minute adjustments to her stance. The tree trunk became perforated with slices and sap oozed out of the bark. To her surprise Katniss found herself enjoying it; she even laughed when he made several degrading comments about the two volunteers from his district. For some reason he seemed to think that the two lethal victors from his district wouldn’t win the games and she found his confidence strangely reassuring. He grumbled about their district escort, so Katniss told him how Effie was always scolding their table manners.

Finally, arm muscles aching, Katniss collapsed onto the bench, still holding the knife. Cato sat next to her and she smiled at him.

‘Thank you.’ She said, and she actually meant it, not just for the lesson but for distracting her momentarily from worries about the games and her sister back home. Cato was silent and the grin on his face faded.

‘What you did, volunteering for your sister, that was brave.’ He said sincerely and Katniss looked at him, taken aback.

‘People in your district volunteer all the time.’ She replied, surprised.

‘Yeah, but we’ve trained for it all our lives. There’s a good chance if you volunteer from 2 that you’ll win.

‘’She’d my sister, I couldn’t let her die.’ She said truthfully. Cato opened his mouth to reply but his words were lost in the noise of the ding of the arriving lift. They both spun to face the door and Katniss instinctively hid the throwing knife down her pyjama waistband to conceal it from view.

Two adults rushed onto the roof, catching sight of them quickly. They hurried over, a tall, slender woman trailing behind one of the biggest men she’d ever seen. The man charged past her, barrelling towards Cato with both arms outstretched. The younger man sidestepped, a heavy punch clobbering the bigger man in the ribs even as the charging man snatched Cato’s free arm. The two twisted and punched, chests pressed together and legs tangling as each tried to trip the other without falling himself. They communicated in animalistic snarls and grunts, then with a crash, both tumbled to the floor. Cato twisted, landed on top, then suddenly was on the bottom as his opponent used a move Katniss wished she’d caught. She scurried back to avoid their flailing limbs and her foot caught in the velvet blanket, sending her crashing backwards.

By the time she looked up, Cato seemed to have given up fighting. The man hauled him to his feet and dragged him towards the doors.

Then the woman stepped forwards and offered a hand to Katniss, she took it cautiously and allowed the woman to pull her to her feet.

‘Are you OK?’ She asked worriedly and Katniss nodded to signal that yes, she was alright. The woman didn’t seem to believe her though because she checked her over anyway, patting her down and narrowly missing the knife in her waistband.

‘No injuries as far as I can tell.’ She said and Katniss caught a glimpse of something glinting in her mouth. Suddenly connecting the dots, Katniss realised just who stood in front of her; district 2, shiny teeth and the muscled build, the woman in front of her was Enobaria, the person that won her games by ripping out the throats of her enemies with her teeth. Katniss recoiled from her instinctively, then felt awful when the woman’s face fell. Enobaria took her arm and guided her back through the door, stooping to pick up the velvet blanket as they passed.

To Katniss’ surprise the victor accompanied her all the way to her room, babbling about how thankful she was that Katniss wasn’t hurt. Enobaria helped her into bed and threw the blanket over her. She left briefly to get a hot chocolate and returned to tuck her in.

‘I’ve always wanted to do this.’ She said as she folded the blanket snuggly around Katniss.

‘Do what?’ Katniss asked.

‘Tuck someone in,’ Enobaria sat at the edge of Katniss’ bed by the pillow. ‘I wanted kids, before the games of course.’ She seemed like she was about to continue but there came a crash followed by several colourful curses from next door which Katniss guessed was Haymitch falling out of bed.

Enobaria gave her the hot chocolate and bid her goodnight in a surprisingly reluctant manner before shutting the door and leaving her to her thoughts. Katniss finally removed the throwing knife from her sleeve and turned it over in her hands as she sipped her drink. Once she had finished she used the remote to turn off the lights and she snuggled down in the covers still holding the knife. She had a lot to think about; Cato’s apparent sanity, her lesson in knife throwing, Enobaria’s kindness and above all her family back at home. She wondered how Prim was getting on without her and she hoped that Gale was managing to feed them. She hoped her mother hadn’t already faded out and that she wouldn’t when… if Katniss died in the games.

When she finally fell asleep she was still clutching the knife in her hands.


End file.
